Articles
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Making of nasin kama, nasin pini
March 14, 2024
As usual, a little bit of context: toki Pona is a philosophical artistic constructed language created by Sonja Lang known for its small vocabulary, simplicity, and ease of acquisition.
I have made songs with UTAU or Vocaloid tunings before, but this is my first time attempting to tune toki pona. Anyway, here’s the lyric video:
When I heard this song on Pokemon Day, I knew that I had to make something based off of it. It’s cute, it’s wholesome, and iyowa just pulled another classic iyowa again. There were 3 key changes in the first verse alone, and they didn’t even try to hold back the super-iconic chromatic descensions.
Translation
Real notes from the translating processThe translating process was quite a pain. First of all, my Japanese is pretty bad, especially on the grammar side. This meant that I didn’t even know what the original lyrics said super clearly to begin with, and I know how inaccurate machine translations of lyrics can be—even more inaccurate than my own translations! My toki pona was pretty bad as well at the time of translating this, and I had to refer to my one-page cheat-sheet constantly. This made the entire process extra painful, but from my perspective, I did find some pretty elegant solutions to some of the translation problems.
I knew that accuracy wasn’t my goal. I’ve seen quite a few toki pona translations of songs, and most of them completely deviate from the expressions of the original lyrics, instead opting for a more paraphrasing approach. I tried to preserve as much as possible, however, I don’t think the result is particularly pleasing. I wasn’t satisfied, but it was good enough.
Tuning
Using UTAU, I obviously couldn’t use 初音ミク again like in the original soundtrack. I knew that I was inexperienced, so I picked a very versatile and robust voicebank—重音テト—which would hopefully survive my uneducated manipulations. Its voice range was quite wide, which proved absolutely mandatory because of how ear-piercingly high this song’s vocal goes.
[β̞i]!Japanese aligns with toki pona’s phonemes pretty well, with a few exceptions. Two I had to constantly deal with were [wi] and [si]. In Japanese, the two supposed equivalents were [β̞i] and [ɕi]. [ɕi] is way too far from the intended [si] sound, and [β̞i] doesn’t exist in most voicebanks (not even テト!) because the corresponding kana, ゐ, is historical and isn’t used anymore.
I had to make compromises. I joined the [ɯ] and [i] back to back to make something that sounds kind of like [wi]. In fact, the IPA symbols themselves look quite similar! [si] then was achieved by synthesizing a [sɨ], cutting off most of the vowel section, and playing [i] immediately. Admittedly, some places sounded wonky, but this is really the best I could do.
Whoa, look how high it can go!As for the actual tuning, I had no vision in what I wanted, so I only did minimal amounts of pitch bending and vibrato editing. I didn’t think it was very good, but it’s definitely good enough for this project.
Visuals
If you are in the conlang community, you will definitely recognize this style from jan Misali. It’s quite a good format, and it saves so much time. It only took me some 3 hours to write all the comments and compile everything into a video. I didn’t typeset the pi phrases correctly, but it definitely looks neat thanks to the well-designed C059 and linja pona fonts.
So… It’s done!
I really, really wanted to get this done. I knew this wouldn’t earn any popularity, and it will only be something that I can show my friends in the toki pona community. However, it is a proof of concept, and it is super important for me that I know I know how to make something like this. If I wanted to make something good, I would probably get stuck on the translation, or the tuning, or the visuals. Every step could easily take at least 3 months.
I’m honestly really happy that I rolled this unpolished product out in the world: I’m a big believer of the “cult of done” manifesto. Although perfect is better than done, I certainly will not be able to manage “perfect”. I didn’t even know if I could manage “done”, but a 2-week-long project like this won’t eat up too much of my time anyways.
I will definitely roll out more unpolished projects like this in the future. They will be bad. All of them. However, I can learn something new from every attempt, and hopefully, eventually—eventually, they will be good. Or at least tolerable!
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toki wile pi mama lawa (Lord's Prayer)
February 14, 2024
A little bit of context: toki Pona is a philosophical artistic constructed language created by Sonja Lang known for its small vocabulary, simplicity, and ease of acquisition.
toki wile pi mama lawa stands for “Lord’s Prayer”: literally, “speech of wants relating to the parent-leader”. I’m not Christian, but I chose the Lord’s Prayer for my first translation project because it is short, sweet, and kind of tricky. Furthermore, it is widely translated, so having a version in toki pona never hurts. Here is the “original” version: The Lord’s Prayer (Πάτερ ἡμῶν/Pater Noster, for the nerds) is originally written in Greek. This version is the oldest of the best known English translations, from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer.
Our Father, which art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy Name;
Thy kingdom come;
Thy will be done
in earth, as it is in heaven:
Give us this day our daily bread;
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive them that trespass against us;
And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil;
For thine is the kingdom,
the power, and the glory,
For ever and ever.
Amen.linja pona is probably the best sitelen pona font out there. Here is my translation in glorious sitelen pona, rendered using linja pona by jan Same.
Red text on the bottom: “toki Latina la ni li Pata Nosuta. jan Kajo li ante e toki” (In Latin this is Pater Noster. The person Kajo translated.)
The following are short translations of the toki pona text. The second lines for each block translate each individual word in the sentence, and the third lines are most probable interpretations by the average toki pona user. IMP: imperative marker; 1P: first person pronoun; 2P: second person pronoun; VERB: verb marker; OBJ: direct object marker; CONTEXT: context marker; LOC: location marker; REBRACKET: re-brackets adjectives after the marker
o mama mi
IMP parent 1P
Our parent/fathero mama li insa e kon sewi
IMP parent VERB inside OBJ air above
Parent/father who is inside heaveno sewi e nimi sina
IMP rise OBJ name 2P
Glorify your nameo kama e ma sina
IMP come OBJ land 2P
Bring your kingdomtenpo kama la pali sina lon ni li pali
time come CONTEXT deed 2P LOC here VERB do
In the future, your job will be done herepali sina lon kon sewi li pali
deed 2P LOC air above VERB do
[Like how] your job in heaven are doneo pana e pan pi tenpo suno ni tawa mi
IMP give OBJ bread(wheat-based food) REBRACKET time sun here go 1P
Give today’s bread to uso weka e pali ike mi
IMP make-disappear OBJ deed bad 1P
Forgive our bad-doingsni la mi weka e pali ike pi jan ala
this CONTEXT 1P make-disappear OBJ bad REBRACKET person different
In this context, we forgive the bad-doings of other peopleo lawa ala e mi tawa wile ike
IMP lead not OBJ 1P go want bad
Do not lead us toward bad desireso lawa ala e mi tawa wawa ike
IMP lead not OBJ 1P go power bad
Do not lead us toward bad powerstenpo ni la, tenpo kama la,
time this CONTEXT, time come CONTEXT,
Now, and in the future,sina jo e ma suli e wawa suli e nimi suli
2P have OBJ land big OBJ power big OBJ name big
you [always] have the important kingdom, the important power, and the important recognition.Amen
Amen tokiponized is still Amen.It was pretty challenging, because expressing logic in toki pona is pretty hard as only 3 conjunctions are available. A lot of the more complex ideas are possible by community consensus, for example, tenpo suno ni (time, sun, now) being “today”. However, I’m starting to see that poetic language is pretty easy in toki pona. Because sentence structures are simple and shallow, parallel structures can almost be achieved without intentionally doing so.
mi tawa!
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Mathematical Tricks in the Academic Hunger Games
February 14, 2024
Geometry problems, especially well-designed geometry problems are generally awesome. Sometimes, some of these problems are even more puzzle-like than these so-called math puzzles: you either get it, or you don’t.
I hate geometry problems.
The Academic Hunger Games
I spent most of my life living in China, and this meant that I got to experience the totally-not-Orwellian torment that is Zhongkao. Alternatively, the Junior High School Scholastic Aptitude Examination
Here’s the deal. You take a test, including sections on Mandarin, math, a foreign language (which is almost always English), various sciences, and various social studies topics. Based on the score and the only the score, 50% of the people get to go to high school, and the other 50% either drop out or go to a vocational high school.
This is the real score distribution from when I graduated middle school, just to give you a mental scale.
There’s no need to stress, just do your best. Worst case scenario you go to an assembly line and work 14 hours every day until you die.
What do you do, then? Obviously, people start spending more time at school, and they get better at taking tests; and obviously the test gets harder each year because people became better at taking tests.
Yes this is a school. Yes they are literally called the anti-suicide bars. Then people start spending even more time at school. And the cycle has never stopped. It is not ever going to stop, either.Anyways, back to geometry problems.
Hard-for-grade-level geometry problems are always on the math section of Zhongkao. You are only allowed to test on a limited set of skills - this is a test for 9th graders, after all. However, with well-crafted puzzles, the time, effort, and cleverness that is needed to solve these problems are at a significantly higher level compared to the “base” skills they are supposedly testing on.
For example, this is a real problem from the math section:
Seriously, try to solve it. It can be really fun if you are the type of person that enjoys puzzles, and it only requires high school geometry skills. It may be harder or easier than you think.
I used to really enjoy these. However, all the fun goes away when there is a 20-minute timer in front of you, and not being able to solve it means that you go to the factories. To be honest, I haven’t attempted these problems for a good while now, because I’m not in that system anymore. However, just recently, one of my experience reminded me of these types of problems, and perhaps more importantly, my relationship with these types of problems.
Problem six
Problem 6 from math league #5 this year felt quite similar to these problems:
I tried very hard to solve it during the competition, but I couldn’t. However, I demanded an answer from myself. Therefore, I spent 2 hours after school by myself playing with various ideas and methods. At last, I figured out that I shouldn’t waste my time like this, so I used an unholy method as the last resort. With unholy methods came unholy numbers:
\[\frac{-6(3\sqrt{3}cos(20^{\circ})-6cos(10^{\circ})+4sin(40^{\circ})-13sin(20^{\circ})-4(2sin(10^{\circ})+1)\sqrt{3})}{cos(40^{\circ})+1}\]Then, at the next day, the answer was revealed to me. It was part beautiful and part twisted, but I couldn’t figure out why I thought of it that way.
And, of course:
\[the\:horrid\:trig\:expression=41.5962...\] \[24\sqrt{3}=41.5962...\]Would I get full credit if I had written the horrid trig expression? I don’t think it really matters now anyways. I had a test coming up, so I couldn’t really say anything even if I knew what to say. Also, of course I blundered two easier problems because I spent too much time on problem 6 during the competition.
Reflection
To be entirely honest, the answer was exactly what I was hoping it to be. I should be so excited and satisfied for this answer.
However, I just cannot keep telling my self the lie that I did all of this just for fun. I tried to find the solution because of a sense of urgency, and a sort of lingering, invisible expectation that I had no idea where it was coming from. Until I started to think about how I was conditioned to think about geometry problems, and how through this conditioning I started to hate them with the entirety of my heart.
This might be a tricky problem for current me, but I really believe that I will be able to work it out.